Builder Profile: Brown Note Amplifiers

The new ODR 100 D’Lite has footswitchable Clean, Overdrive, and Boost controls. Front-panel controls include Volume, three mini toggles—BR1/BR2, Norm/Deep, and Lean/Fat—Treble, Mid, Bass, Drive and Level for the
Overdrive function, and Master and Presence knobs.

The slogan on Brown Note’s MySpace page
reads, “Guitar Amps That Don’t Suck.”
Judging by the number of guitarists who
flock to the Fair Oaks, California, company’s
demo room at the annual New York and Los
Angeles Amp Shows, that’s something of an
understatement.

Brown Note’s founder is Moss Hudson.
Rather than follow the conventional path
into amp manufacturing—one that typically
begins with learning the ropes doing
repairs and mods—Hudson made his name
by selling kit amps to DIYers. Eventually,
he added assembled amps to the offerings
and now Brown Note has a full product line,
ranging from low-wattage tone machines to
100-watt beasts.

The DIY ethos can be traced back to
Hudson’s youth. After obtaining the Radio
Shack 101 Electronics Projects Kit, Hudson
became an electronics freak. He took pleasure
in converting battery-powered board
games to AC power, giving the board game
Operation a whole new meaning. And as
a teen, Hudson went to school with a kid
whose dad had “all this cool stuff—guitars,
electronics, and stereos.” It turned out the
kid’s father was Sammy Hagar. Inspired by
what he saw, Hudson scraped together
enough money to buy an imported guitar
and snagged a Magnavox console stereo
his neighbor was getting ready to trash.
Determined to find a way to make use of
the Magnavox, Hudson summoned what he
could remember from the Radio Shack kit’s
“Big Ear” amplifier circuit to build a crude
guitar amp. That initial project planted the
seeds for Hudson’s amp-building business.
What’s the origin of Brown Note amps?

I got started offering supplies to do-it-yourselfers.
In 2000, inspired by sites like ampage.com and 18watt.com, I really got
involved with the DIY craze. I was the first
to offer an 18-watt kit based on the lead
channel of the Marshall 1974X, and then,
as far as I know, I was the first to offer an
Overdrive Special-type kit—the D’Lite.
How much electronics knowledge does
someone buying a kit need to assemble it?

I’d say almost none. I know of people who
have never even heated a soldering iron
who just decided to try it and were totally
successful.
How long does it take to build a kit amp?

A guy who is really cooking could have
an amp kit up and running in a week, yet
another guy might take six months to a
year to complete it. If you decide to tackle
a kit with no experience, you need to
approach the project slowly and methodically—
and ask a lot of questions. After
you’ve built three or four kits, you could
easily assemble one in a weekend.

The back of the ODR 100 features convenient power-tube bias-adjusting controls (top), as well as an Impedance selector, FX Loop, an OD Gain Trim
control for adjusting the amount of footswitchable gain, three mini toggles—OD (which switches between clean and overdrive), MID (for mid boost), and
PAB (for a preamp boost)—and a 5-pin jack for the footswitch (bottom).

What are the differences between your
kits and the assembled amps you sell now?

The whole idea with the kit is to provide a
really high-quality product and make it as
affordable as possible. My other goal is to
simplify the building process, so someone
who is just starting out can put one together.
Fortunately, simplified circuits end up
sounding really good. With the Brown Note
amp line, our approach is to offer as high-quality
an amp as possible and include all
the things customers want, like an effects
loop and reverb.

So a customer can’t get reverb and an
effects loop in a kit?

Our kits are streamlined for the sake of
cost and ease of assembly. That said, we
now have a reverb retrofit kit and effects
loop kit available, and we also offer a footswitching
kit. For more ambitious builders,
we offer kits with add-ons to bring the
level of the DIY features closer to our production
builds.

By making affordable kits available, you
probably reduce the temptation for someone
to open up one of your production
amps and copy it.

Even if you try to keep it a secret, people
are going to find out what’s under the
hood anyway. We follow more of an open-source
model. That’s cool because it’s like
a community—a collaborative effort with
hundreds of great minds working together
and sharing knowledge.
Has anybody come up with a kit mod that
you’ve integrated into your designs?

Norm Feaster worked with me closely in
developing the D’Lite kit and had some
great ideas we put into use, and Scott
Lerner was very helpful. There’s Gil Ayan,
who came up with a cool treble-bleed
circuit I use, and Alfonso Hermida who
worked with me on a ported cabinet
design. The Hall VVR, Iron Sounds FX
Loop, and Ampdoc 3-relay board are aftermarket
items you can add to your amp kit.
A lot of guys have really tricked out their
build and done cool stuff. In some cases,
their mods mirror what we’re doing with
our production amps.

Many of your customers are influenced
by Robben Ford and Larry Carlton. Is that
where you’re coming from as a guitarist?

In the ’80s, I was in a punk band and wanted
to be a rock star like everyone else. We
did a record with Alternative Tentacles,
who were on the Dead Kennedys’ label.
That’s a far cry from Larry Carlton. But I
always dug Carlton and guys like Al Di
Meola—fiery guitar players. Many guitarists
who use our amps play rock or blues.
They just don’t have that many clips up on
our website.

It starts with the low-wattage offerings like
the Lite 18, which only has a volume and
tone control, and its juiced-up sibling, the
Dirty 18. Then there’s the Foxy 18—which is
like an AC15, but with more power and tonal
control—and the higher-gain Wreck Lite,
which has Treble, Mid, and Bass controls.

In the 30-watt range, we have the Foxy 33,
Lite 33, Foxy 2+2, and Space Cadet. The
Foxy 2+2 is unique: It has a single set of
controls, but two separate preamp stages
driven by either a 12AX7 or an EF86 tube,
and two power stages driven by a pair of
EL84s or a pair of EL34s that you can switch
between or combine. The Space Cadet runs
a pair of EL34s at about 35 watts and has
reverb. They’re all single-channel amps that
you crank up and control with your picking
dynamics and guitar’s volume knob.

Then there’s the D’Lite 22/33, which can
switch between a pair of 6V6s at 22 watts
or a pair of 6L6s at 33 watts, the D’Lite
44 GTO, which has more power and can
run 6V6, 6L6, or EL34s. The D’Lite Blue
Monkey 44 is a nod to the Overdrive Special
Bluesmaster. It has a bouncy, low-headroom
American clean tone, and an overdrive tone
that can go from a Texas purr to a Brit-like
screaming lead. At the New York Amp Show,
we introduced the ODR 100, a 100-watt
reverb head. These amps have footswitchable
Clean, Overdrive, and Boost controls.
They also include a passive effects loop
with no send and return level controls. If
you want to add active controls, our tube-buffered
Little Dummy effects-loop unit has
send and return levels, as well as a bright
control that can be useful for shaping EQ
and overdrive character. It can also drive the
effects loop signal down long cable runs to
and from a pedalboard. We can also build
the tube effects loop into an amp.

If money and resale value were not issues
and someone wanted that sound, should
they choose a Dumble or a Brown Note
D-style amp?

That’s a valid question. Several of my customers
own Dumbles and also have Brown
Note amps because they like them and
because they can leave their Dumbles at
home. What makes this amp better than
that amp? With any amp, we’re all working
with the same tools. You’re either going
to be influenced by the marketing, the
website, the clips, or you have a friend that
recommends it. Besides all that, people are
pretty intuitive. If you can call and talk to
somebody and have a custom-made amp
tailored to your specific needs, that might
be a factor in your decision. I remember
reading about Dumbles in the early ’80s
and thinking, “What is that all about?”
Then I had the opportunity to hear one,
and I thought, “Man, that doesn’t sound
anything like I thought it would.” I had my
1971 Marshall Super Bass 100 and, to me,
that was it. There’s no doubt that Dumbles
are awesome, but it could also be the
case that you don’t dig that sound. Maybe
you’re more of a 50-watt Marshall guy.

A Brown Note D’Lite Blue Monkey 88 Reverb head and Celestion G12-65-loaded 1x12 AdLib cab, Lite 18 head with a Vintage Compact 1x12 cab loaded with
a Celestion G12M, a D’Lite44 ODE with a Compact cab featuring a Celestion G12-65, and a Foxy 33 head and Compact cab with a Tone Tubby Alnico speaker.

What are some benchmark amps?

I know there are a lot of amps that should
probably be on this list that I haven’t played,
but based on personal experience, some
great amps are the Ampeg G12, Bogen CHB-
10A, Burman Pro 502, Dumble Overdrive
Deluxe, Fender Super Champ, Fender 6G9
Tremolux, Fender 6G11 Vibrolux, Magnatone
421, Magnatone 460, Marshall Super Bass
100, Masco MA-25, Selmer Zodiac Twin 30,
and the Trainwreck Rocket.
Where do you stand on the point-to-point
versus printed circuit board debate?

I’m not a real Nazi about that stuff. If you do
it right, straight point-to-point can be really
awesome, but I have nothing against printed
circuit boards. We use everything—point-to-point,
tag board layout, turret boards, eyelet
boards, and PCB boards. What we do with
the PCB board—and this makes all the difference—
is use a board that is 1/8" thick.
It’s completely rigid and has the tracers and
circuitry basically embedded in it. And on top
of that, it has the eyelet, so you have a really
solid anchor for the components to attach to.
That’s just bulletproof.

A glimpse inside the Brown Note shop in Fair Oaks, California.

Brown Note’s amp “burn-in” rack.

You have an exciting product in the
works. Care to divulge?

We were working with Pete Anderson, and
we got an amp really dialed in to his exact
taste. However, because he has used a Line
6 POD through a tube power amp for years,
he wants some programmability. To get from
one sound to another on his Brown Note amp
requires tweaking it again and resetting the
controls. So we came up with a way to make
the amp programmable to the extent that you
can change settings with a single foot stomp.
It’s something we can use in other amps too.
Would you ever consider including digital
technology in your amps?

My personal preference is to have an all-analog
signal path, although I did use a
digital delay on my last gig and it was fine
[laughs]. My teenage son is an electronics
and computer whiz, and he helps out with
the amps. When he was a kid, he got the
Radio Shack kit, too. He always has these
cool ideas. I used to say, “Nah, too high
tech.” But now I’m like, “Hey, let’s talk
about some of this stuff.”

Will digital technology render tube
amps obsolete?

I wonder about that myself. I don’t know.

What does the future hold for Brown Note?

I really want to grow the business organically.
I don’t want to be the next Marshall or
Fender or Vox. It’s hard to work on a business
when you’re in a business. Right now, it
would probably be good to go into survival
products—dried fruits and crank radios.

Mick Lionheart
A story on Brown Note would not be complete without giving props to Hudson’s
teenage son—electronics genius Mick Lionheart—who helps at the Brown Note factory
by, according to Lionheart himself, “mostly doing circuit changes and spec’ing
out optimum values.” We checked in with Lionheart to see how a 17-year-old kid
who cites Bob Moog as an influence views amp design.

Brown Note founder Moss Hudson’s son Mick Lionheart is helping develop the outboard BNMC12, which will
bring programmability to the new tube amp the company is creating for blues-rock guitarist Pete Anderson.

You probably have a different sonic sense than your father. What are your references
for good amp tone?

My dad’s probably more of a guitar player than me. I’m more of a synthesizer kind
of guy. I’d like an amp to be as clean as possible so it makes a good audio platform,
although it would definitely need a good gain channel. I place higher importance on
the clean channel than the gain channel.

What’s an example of a good clean sound?

My ideal for a clean channel is a flat frequency response—perfectly linear amps.
That’s a little difficult to achieve with vacuum tubes. I’ve considered solid-state
designs, however the tube sound is noticeably warmer. I spend a lot of time getting
the sound filtered correctly and in the right stages. The filtering before the preamp
is what I find important. The filtering between the preamp and power amp is slightly
less important, but still very significant.

Brown Note amps are associated with vintage design. If you implemented some
of your designs that stray far from traditional circuits, would your amps be
released as a Brown Note product?

If it were something fully solid-state, it might be part of a special line sold by Brown
Note or even under a different name, but backed by Brown Note.
Will you make Brown Note amps your career?

I see myself contributing to it, although I also have a lot of my own projects that are
mostly software based. Also, I’ve been working on building synthesizers and some
borderline physics experiments.
Do you and your dad have any distinctly divergent views on audio?

I notice he’s more analog minded. I definitely like analog sound, but even in a
fully analog amp, I find there are places for digital circuitry—more on the control
side, less on the audio amplification side. I’m working on an amp now, and I have
yet to see anything remotely similar to it. If it catches on it might change the
amp market. I’m trying to find the balance between great sound and not having
a ridiculous price tag.

New York City native Joe Charupakorn is a guitarist, author, and editor. He has interviewed the world’s biggest guitar icons including Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Yngwie Malmsteen, Carlos Santana, Neal Schon, and Dave Davies, among many others, for Premier Guitar. Additionally, he has written over 20 instructional books for Hal Leonard Corporation. His books are available worldwide and have been translated into many languages. Visit him on the web at joecharupakorn.com.